This is not my website. That would be www.lovelake.org. This was about art and artists, writings, interviews, audio, video etc. during a certain era of art blogging. Now it is just suspended in the occasional image.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

My next Guest on Art Focus will be Jesse Hayward who has a show opening up on Friday at GalleryHomeland. The title of the show is Beating to Windward. He is known for making sculptures which are paintings and vice versa. His statement is below:

The title of this exhibition, Beating To Windward, is a sailing term
that describes the act of sailing a boat upwind. I learned this term
as a child who was repeatedly shipped off to sailing camps in the
summer. Although my camp routine consisted of nursing orange sodas
while sneaking off under the docks, I was nonetheless dutifully
trained in the basic tenants of sailing. One nautical fact alone blew
my mind as a child and it still does today. People can sail upwind.
Through cleverness, a sailor can move up into the wind blowing back
against the sails. As a child I thought, "How on Earth?" Now I
think, "What a Metaphor!" Apparently, when our intellect is properly
coupled with craft and technique, we not only protect ourselves
against adversity but we may actually harness the inherent power
within an obstacle to move ourselves through that obstacle. It turns
out that life's obstacles can be used to fuel our future victories.
As for the paintings in this show, they are abstractions based on
those long summer days living in ropes and sails, watching the wind
and weather.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Saatchi Online has a new project to promote their site and many of the artists on it. It is called 100 Curators. A new curator each day for 100 days will select ten artists from the site. This initiative was developed by Gallery Director Rebecca Wilson.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

My step dad said he was a geologist. But he might have been just an avid rock collector. No matter.
Actually I think they called him a Rock Hound.
We had rocks everywhere - lining the long dirt road of a driveway, benches made of obsidian, jars of agates.
But it's not like he ever talked about where he went to school. In fact I don't remember him being much of a breadwinner at all. Later on, Mom gave me all kinds of stories about him, some of which are probably not true. You just believe your parent, the one you rely on for everything but later on realize that they tell impossible tales.

So even though I loved this man, who died when I was twelve, I don't know who he is. I've decided it doesn't matter. This piece I will always associate with Southern Oregon. On recent visits beautiful young New Agers sold crystals on the main street and told me their own tales. Anonymous WomanNo. 51 is another sort of self portrait. The crystals I stashed for one collage, for one face. For a couple weeks I had fun just floating them around.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Nice to see the review by Patrick Collier at Oregon Artswatch of SF artists currently showing in Portland. I especially liked Jaik Faulk at Nationale, with his Hello Darlin' - as if Joe Buck of Midnight cowboy had discovered Glam and the Mudd Club and widened his territory, this might be his crew. A beautiful show.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

The above work looks like painting. Well, it is and it isn't. It's also a collage. Lisa Gronseth paints and then cuts and pastes her painting to make these gorgeous works based on Dubai دبي. Gronseth will be my guest on Art Focus next Tuesday, July 17TH. Her show is at Chambers@916.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

At Blue Sky is North Portland Polaroids by Bobby Abrahamson. From the PR:

"Bobby Abrahamson's photographic typology featuring the individuals who call St. Johns home does what any good typology should do: it calls attention to similarity as well as difference, and though favoring neither, it savors the subtleties of idiosyncrasy."
--Julia Dolan, Minor White Curator of Photography, Portland Art Museum

After buying a house in North Portland in the spring of 2011, photographer Bobby Abrahamson decided to stay in town for the summer and start shooting "a portrait a day" in his neighborhood of St. Johns. About the same time, he received from a friend a box of the coveted and soon-to-be-extinct Polaroid Type 55 4" X 5" instant positive/negative film. Even though he had not photographed much with a large-format camera before, and certainly not portraits on the street, he embraced the project as a way to meet his new neighbors.

There is also an exhibition of photos from this group, but printed in a larger format - at Ampersand Gallery. Ampersand put out an accompanying book with an essay by Julia Dolan of the Portland Art Museum. Bobby Abrahamson, Julia Dolan and Myles Haselhorst of Ampersand will all be my guests on Art Focus this coming Tuesday, July 10TH. Ought to be a great show.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

I came across this NYTimes Op-Ed post via Two Coats of Paint. While never one to keep my phone at the table or the bar, looking for another place to be but where I am, I am nonetheless going through a re-assessment of what busy means. Making work is sometimes not really object-driven, but a way for me to sort through the day or the inner list. Art means a multitude of things at any given time. The recent upheaval reminds me that art is a life and a living, not just a particular activity. But in order for art to succeed, to last, it took over nearly everything. It's became not only my church and my business but also my lover, all sex and Romance, the child who needs another bottle, the first, last and next thing to do. Yet sometimes you have to sit still for art and sometimes for a long time. This kind of duality is a never-ending learning process.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

One of the most popular, most downloaded interviews at Art Focus was with Ben Pink of Launch Pad. So when I heard that Launch Pad was closing, I knew I had to have him on again. July brings a massive group show to the gallery called On The Edge. In August it will host a two person exhibition with a big closing party in September. Launch Pad was truly a haven for emerging artists. The interview will air this coming Tuesday, July 3rd.